OPINION: Ending The Shenanigans of Traditional Rulers, By Tunji Suleiman

In recent times, the print and social media have been awash with reports of one Oba snubbing another at a public function. Then the partisans of one against the other and other denizens of cyberspace went to work on what has become regular pastimes of their royal highnesses, supremacy contests. Beneath the surface, however, of the unbecoming anti-social behavior of so-called royal fathers and resultant socio-political obscurantism and historical revisionism of their paid and volunteer hacks, bubble questions on the restructuring badly needed in our polity.

The place and role of the traditional institution in our nation raise important questions begging for answers and this should interest our policy makers and development thinkers.

In my opinion, these personalities and the institution they represent have outlived their public usefulness and are increasingly in the news for the wrong reasons. To say that their nuisance value increases by the day is to be charitable. When they are not abducting underage girls for forced marriages, they are fueling ethnic/tribal conflict. Many sponsor private armies and thuggery in the form of ‘dogarai’, ‘eruuku’ and ‘ajagungbale’ in aid of land grabs, electoral fraud and sundry criminality. At other times, they participate in ritual killings, cannibalism and other vestiges of barbarism. They sell chieftaincy titles to treasury looters and fraudsters. Else, they parasite on private citizens to sustain their lives of ease.

To my mind, most of these characters have no real value in a modern democratic republic and are adding nothing substantial. Some are stark illiterates who know not their left from right. Their notions of public administration are steeped in superstitions.

In all it’s manifestations, the only enduring legacy of the outdated institution on our national psyche is that it breeds and perpetuates a culture of arrogance and indolence among the old and young of these royalties and their patrons and hangers-on. This forms part of what I call the need-and-entitlement complex that impels and feeds corruption in Nigeria. It is a drain on public resources in many 3rd world economies.

To permanently end the perennial contentious and anti-social conduct of these heirs to an antiquated past and modern-day pretenders to power, the entire traditional rulership institution in Nigeria should be abolished, and all its support structure demolished.

Other than private family or clan headship with no bearing on the public, all leadership by inheritance should be abrogated with all the paraphernalia and derivatives, including the chieftaincies and titles they dispense that add nothing beyond free money to their pockets and ego massage for their patrons who buy the titles as props to their delusions of grandeur.

To preserve the so-called traditions they represent, the argument of some royalists for retaining the obsolescence, they can be converted to cultural heritage centers or custodianships under the framework of museums and antiquities. This should however be self-sustaining without recourse to public funds. And they should have no power whatsoever to levy citizens other than those who willingly patronize them. They can alternatively be allowed to operate as tourism franchises concessioned/licensed to interested and capable members of the so-called royal families and/or qualifying investors as quasi-commercial and taxable ventures.

We clamor for democracy, development, modernization and egalitarianism as obtained in Europe, America and the rest of the developed world, yet remain marooned in times past by preserving structures that those nations consigned to the dustbin of history to which they belong over 200 years ago. Some of the abrogated royalties of Europe were empires that spanned continents, yet between VI and Epe in Lagos, a distance of not more than 50km, one will count not less than 50 so-called kingdoms or chieftaincies, an average of 2 per kilometer radius. And they get stipends/subventions from the commonwealth and perpetually yearn for more. Also, they periodically prey on citizens, especially motorists and property developers.

This scenario is replicated in one form or another throughout the country. Is this not absurd in a low-income economy in recession? Those clamoring for preservation of “culture/tradition” and modernization at the same time simply want to eat their cake and have it – an impossibility.

Without prejudice to the recent laudable law against land grabbers, what obtains in Lagos is ridiculous to say the least. What some of those ‘royal families’ now do is to wake up one day and surreptitiously erect signboards declaring land they sold years ago without improvement, infrastructure or ongoing value-add as ‘estate’. Before the ink dries on the signage, they would have started imposing illegal tolls and development and security levies on residents and land owners in their mushroom “Iregbeland”.

Or consider the case where royal family A sells land to Mr B who in turn sells years later to Mr C to D, E and so on. Yet the current king of A will demand and get, sometimes at the threat of or actual deployment of ‘eruuku’ for violent disruption of developments on the land, ridiculous sums before B, C, D and/or E can build. At other times, the king demands and gets a whopping N1m or more each time just to sign routine deeds of assignment for the land sold and duly paid for at already exorbitant prices by 2 or more buyers over time. N1m plus for one man’s signature, for doing nothing! Pray tell, exactly how has he earned N1m for each such signature?

There should be a limit to the size of land any king or royal family can hold especially in urban areas. Beyond this limit, all excess land should be forfeited to government, who can then move in and plan into residential, agricultural, commercial and industrial layouts, provide infrastructure and make available at affordable rates to those who need land for development and regenerative uses. Once you sell your land that should be the end of the matter, royalty or not. It should be criminal for anyone to demand “Kabiyesi hand” and “Palace” fees in millions of Naira for assignment papers in respect of land for which the full price has been paid. This will transfer access to land from violent land-grabbers who have held and speculated upon it for so long to those that need it for productivity, reduce the cost of land, bridge the housing gap, aid development planning and control and create jobs for our teeming masses in the clutches of unemployment and underemployment.

These proposals are fundamental and go to the heart of the matter, not the window dressing we have been engaging in. But one may not make omelette without breaking eggs. This in my opinion is the anecdote to the ‘omo onile’ syndrome and menace, the brazen paedophilia of some northern kings, and endless historical revisionism with which royalists assail our collective psyche, heat up the polity and fuel confusion, while the beneficiaries continue to smile to the banks and enjoy unmerited advantages. It will also reduce ethnic conflicts and tribalism.

We need to restructure our polity and government for effective service delivery at the grassroots level instead of abdicating same, especially security, to traditional rulers who for all plausible intent and purposes lack legislative, judicial and executive powers, except upon resort to illegalities. And neither should they be granted such powers as they are canvassing for, lest we legitimize another layer of oppression by a minority clique the populace did not vote for. Once state of origin/indigeneship, tribe, religion and other divisive elements of our nationhood are displaced by the unifying ideals of citizenship and residency, the oxymoron of hereditary middlemen between the electorate and the government they elect into power will be more clearly appreciated.

That someone’s ancestor cunningly displaced or violently subdued others, called himself king centuries ago and nobody challenged him, should be no license for him to live easier today than everyone else. If we insist on protecting the heirs of a system that decimated its own population through internecine wars, sold its people to the trans-Sahara and trans-Atlantic slavery, and was later conquered and then propped up for ease of administration of the colonial divide-and-rule policy of Imperial Britain with contemporary state power and resources, then we might as well end the pretense, revert to the pre-colonial era of political survival of the most brutal and level the playing field for all. That way, if it is the ambition of the one who keeps malice with me to be Oba, Sarki or Igwe of anywhere and he can muster requisite violence to upstage the incumbent, then so be it till someone else comes along to defeat him or his dynasty. So long as private citizens and members of the public are spared from the peculiar mess of their royalties. That may seem like going back in time to the Hobbesian state, but what’s the difference with what we have now? The retrogression signposted by such a reversal in our political-economy may be no worse than the stagnation that preserving the outmoded colonial heritage represents. Our best and brightest continue to be forced to emigrate to saner climes because of these systemic dysfunctions and inequalities that make growth, progress, and pursuit of happiness by peace-loving and law-abiding citizens Herculean, if not impossible .

The solution is for Government to become more inclusive and alive to its duties to governance especially at the local government level. The executive and legislative functions of LGAs should be strengthened. All required public positions at this government tier should be open to appropriate minimum general criteria for aspirants and, where necessary, accessible by popular contests. Whoever wants to be a leader at any level of government should stand for election by the public and all positions should be tenured, not lifelong inheritances.

The traditional rulership institution in all its ramifications should be abolished. All kingship howsoever called, should be annulled, the principal personalities sacked and their so-called domains of easy life and unearned privileges disbanded.

Let everybody go and look for honest work.

Suleiman is  the Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O) of NETMATIX Nigeria Limited and he’s on the Advisory Board of Security Monitor